As another former Amtrak OBS attendant, I agree with my long-time friend on the efficacy of the Amtrak design. It's rugged, heavy-duty, but not too heavy (I think they are made out of high-quality aluminum), so it can be handled by smaller and older personnel/volunteers; has no sharp edges to cut oneself on; and can support a person using it on a surface that is rougher and more uneven than a level platform (say detraining in a field or a dirt road for a photo run-by). I have no idea how much they cost, but I believe that they would last under fairly heavy use long enough to be considered a good value purchase for any tourist operation.

I'll throw in a third vote for the Amtrak design. Grand Canyon Railway has been using these for a long time. In the time I worked there, I never had a problem with one. They were simply fantastic. The shop guys also welded a pair of semi circular holders onto the wall of the vestibule that allowed them to be hung on the wall out of the way.

Sorry I'm late to the party on this but the ones we use in service on the Alaska Railroad, which is where I work in train service, are these aluminum steps from Devon Lube.

http://www.devonlube.com/step-stools

That's right, they are for oil change techs. Some of ours are bare aluminum, some have been painted or powder coated, and some have been coated with a truck bed liner substance, which makes them a little heavier, but also more stable if used on ballast.

Hope this helps.

A lot of folks who do the job of helping passengers on or off trains using step boxes have never been told that they can and sometimes must place a foot into the "hand hole" or on the crossbar of the box to keep it in place while being used. This makes it a stable or more stable platform when on a slope, loose ballast, or if passengers step on its edge instead of squarely on it. Twisting it into loose dirt or ballast when placing it also helps. Not following these simple steps is just waiting for an injury to happen. Volunteer car hosts especially need training on this.

I'm over 6 feet tall and weigh about 250 lbs. so once I place the step in the ballast, it doesn't take much effort for me to "seat" it into the ballast with a quick bounce on the step. But yeah, some of the "smaller, lighter" versions of conductors here will place a foot on the horizontal bar as passengers use the step. We have the last regular flagstop service in the country and often receive and discharge passengers in the middle of nowhere so most of us who work the ground are well versed in "step etiquette". These aluminum steps from Devon are very easy to handle for most anyone.

Caught a Youtube video recently that had a snippet of Amtrak's Vancouver - Seattle Talgo train and they were using the Devon step-stool or something very similar.

-Hudson

The Devon looks very nice, but the only pricing I've been able to find is around $200. Ouch.

This here looks interesting, http://wileyequipment.com/products/quic ... tep-IC-10C

Comes in 10", 12" or 15" and is in the $70-80 range. Claims: Unique self-leveling Anti-Tip design. Self-leveling??? From the picture I don't see anything that would make it self-leveling. Says the 10" weighs in at 11 lbs. Apparently there is a reg for step stools, Tested in accordance with A14.2. And another claim I found for it: Anti-tip design, makes it impossible to tip over with normal use.

Here's another source of the Safety Step with more models, http://www.pilotshop.com/categories/pil ... stool.html Looks like it's a small aircraft supply house. I still don't understand the claimed self-leveling feature.

Funny, just the other day I was talking with someone about the old Pullman style steps and how odd it was that nobody made good reproductions of them...

The local Hobby Lobby has some steps that look exactly like these. If they're the same ones, the tag said they weren't even rated to hold 100 pounds.

When you consider the possible cost of a lawsuit, $200 may not be too much to pay, considering the quality of construction and design.

Tom